That's Entertainment?

           A few months back I was home sick, my wife Diane was at work and I just wanted to lie on the couch and do nothing. I decided to watch a movie on cable that I knew Diane wouldn't be interested in watching.

First let me give you a little background as to what we usually like to watch or not watch. We don’t like anything with graphic violence, if it has too much action we get all wound up and can’t get to sleep. Stupid comedies are just a waste of time and horror flicks, well they are usually a combination of all of the above. So what does that leave? Chick flicks, not to violent suspense thrillers, romantic comedies, documentaries, and period movies of classic novels. Realistically we don’t watch too many movies and the same criteria apply to TV shows.

The movie I decided to watch was the American version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” based on a Swedish novel and movie. I had seen the previews and ads on TV so I knew it was a “mystery thriller” but what I didn't expect was the level of graphic violence it contained. I mean for me it was so disturbing that I couldn't get the images out of my mind for weeks.

The story line about a serial killer of young women was bad enough with images of the dead victims but to me that doesn't even compare to the graphic depiction of “Anal Rape”. Not once but twice in the same movie. First the female lead is raped then later she revenge rapes her male rapist, both in way to graphic detail.

This brings me to a question I have to ask because I really don’t understand how and why this kind of imagery has become acceptable entertainment. When did so many in our society become desensitized to the reality of violence? One of the reasons I tell myself that I don’t watch violent images is precisely because I don’t want to become desensitized to the horror of violence. If I’m walking down the street and see someone who’s been victimized, I want to feel their pain and anguish. I want to empathize with them not ignore them.

The problem is that it’s getting harder and harder to not be desensitized. We are constantly bombarded with news images and information about all the violence in the world. Whether its man-made wars, crime, or even accidental violence we see the images. Then there’s Mother Nature with all her destructive power. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, droughts, and everything else she can throw at us, we see images of it all.

With all that real violence all around us, why do we entertain ourselves with fake violence? That’s really my question because I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s just me because I've never been a violent person. I've never been in a fight, I've never hunted or purposely killed anything (yes I feel a little guilt that animals are killed to feed me but that’s another column), and I've never had any violence against me. Or maybe it’s because unconsciously I’m trying to not be reminded of the real life “Unsolved Murder Mystery” surrounding my younger sister’s death when we were teenagers.

Or maybe it’s because there is so much uncontrolled violence all around us that we do want to be desensitized to it. I can kind of understand that, needing to be desensitized so as not to go a little nuts worrying about something out of our control.

But being desensitized and being entertained, those are two very different things and I still don’t get it. Let me give you one last example and story from my life.  As a young man way back in the 70’s I watched all the Muhammad Ali boxing matches and I cheered him on and was in awe of his ability to inflict and receive pain. I was entertained and didn't really give it much thought. Somewhere in my late teens a friend invited me to go with him to watch a live golden gloves competition. That was a turning point in my attitude about violence for entertainments sake. Watching a bunch of 8 and 10 year olds trying to beat each other up was hard enough but watching and listening to all the adults cheer and egg them on was to me disgusting, socially sick, and even immoral. It just felt wrong and it still does.

My feeling is that humans as a species and people as part of a society will never advance or evolve into peace and harmony as long as we are entertained and not appalled by violence and pain. So maybe human nature won’t allow us to advance without violence but I can still fantasize about a peaceful future and that fantasy, that’s what I call entertainment.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 15 of the following link. Winters Express 11/22/12

Food for Thought

Recently Richard Kleeberg wrote in his “On Point” Winters Express column about wanting to know his life’s expiration date and how no one wanted to really talk about that question. I for one would love to talk about it and oh so much more. You see for some reason I spend way too much time thinking about death. The reasons for that could fill a few columns and a few years of therapy so we’ll save that discussion for another time.

            Today let’s go in a direction that’s going to make a lot of you squirm and most of you will think I’m crazy for even having these thoughts. You see not only do I want to know my expiration date but I also want to know my “Nutritional Value” and my “Thermal Value” as well.

            Why? You ask. Because not only do I think a lot about death I also think about over population and how it’s becoming unsustainable. So what’s that got to do with nutrition and heat? Well to put it simply, for long term sustainability the world needs more power (thermal energy) and more food (nutrition). Uh, oh, now you’re starting to see where I’m going with this.

 Yes, I’ll say it. When I die, I either want to be made into some “Spam” like product for human consumption or burned in some big power plant where my final heat will help turn some giant turbine that will produce a small spark of electricity. That little bit of electricity could possibly save someone’s life (or just power some useless gadget) and a few cans of “Spam-Lis” might keep some starving child alive for a few days. Alright, alright, don’t get all grossed out on me. Do we really know most of the time what we are eating and where it came from? As that old fast food commercial so cynically likes to tell us, “parts is parts”.

            Now before you just write me off as totally crazy, remember that these aren’t original thoughts. I guess at the time I didn’t realize how influenced I would be by the 1973 movie, Soylent Green. If you don’t know that movie the basic plot is that in the year 2022 the world is overpopulated, over heated from global warming, and food is in short supply. Most of the population survives on rations of plankton based wafers called Soylent Green produced by the giant Multinational Soylent Corporation. The movie is a basic detective - science fiction with the major plot twist at the end being Charlton Heston yelling out “Soylent Green is People!” after finding out what the wafers are really made of.

            What has always stuck in my mind from that movie was not the people as food part. It was the depiction of voluntary Euthanasia available at government run clinics. The volunteers who were then unwittingly turned into food had this wonderful last experience of sights and sounds from a natural world that had become extinct. Even as a teenager when I saw the movie I thought that’s how I want to go, and I still feel that way.

            Not that I’m ready to go any time soon. Now when I think about my eventual death, whether it be with an unknown expiration date or with an expiration date of my choosing I wonder have I made a difference? Has anything that I’ve done made a positive contribution to my planet and my species? Do I still have the time, energy, or even the desire to try and make a difference?

            As I’ve written before, I tend to lean towards passivity and laziness. So what can I do to help my fellow man and the giant flying rock we live on? Something that won’t take too much effort since I am kind of busy just trying to survive in this modern world of ours. Those couple of ideas I just put out remind me of one of the things I do now that really helps people, is very easy and passive to do, and if you really think about it is also kind of gross and macabre. Every few months I’m solicited by a club with over a million members whose mascot is a ferocious (but almost extinct) wild animal. What are they asking me to do? They want me to give BLOOD and I do so willingly. Once I give it to them they can do anything they want with it. They could be feeding a small army of baby vampires, or maybe making a delightful blood sausage. No matter what, once it’s out of my hands (literally) it could end up anywhere and hopefully it’s doing some good.

            So yes I’m serious. When I’m dead I want my corpse to help make a difference. And those crazy ideas I just put out there, well they’re just food for thought.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 13 of the following link. Winters Express 10/18/12

Now it’s personal!

I’m back! And this time its personal (queue music) Dun-Dun-Dun-Dum! I’m upset, frustrated, and even a little angry. Why you ask, and with whom? In general I’m mad at America and so many of its dysfunctional systems. Since the political season is just getting into full swing let’s start there. The two party American system is broken and short of a populist revolt or military coup I don’t see how it will fix itself. The problem is that the two sides only have self-interest and re-election in mind. There is no room for compromise because it makes you look weak, and if you look weak you can’t get re-elected. Also if you don’t tow the party line the party “bosses” take away their support and once again you can’t get re-elected.

            

          For most of us Americans, politics is like a spectator sport. We pick our favorite team. We root (vote) for them for a multitude of reasons, anything from they were my parents favorite team, their captain is smart or cute, or for that matter black or white, or maybe because I strongly believe in one small part of their total platform (i.e.: pro-life or pro-choice) or this year’s hot button issue (distraction) “Gay Marriage”. Some of us are diehard fans who wear our team colors with pride but can’t afford tickets so we watch the game on TV. Others of us make the big donations and get to sit in the box seats and rub elbows with the powers that be. When it’s all said and done, most of us know the reality that it’s only a game and no matter which team wins or loses it doesn’t affect our day to day lives very much.

            

        Something that does affect our lives more on a daily basis is Health Care or the lack there of. One of the things that I found very frustrating about the whole “ObamaCare” debate is that it actually had very little to do with health care and everything to do with health insurance. Now I don’t know about you but for me these are two totally different issues. One should be a basic human right the other is just a way for some people to make a boat load of money, you decide which is which.

            

       Now this is where it gets personal. I have health insurance (unlike 50 million of my fellow Americans) but I still can’t really afford health care. Let me give it to you by the numbers. My wife and I pay $660 per month for a PPO plan with a $2500 deductable. Now it’s a little misleading because that deductable amount is for each of us so it’s actually $5000. Then there is the little thing the insurance companies call Maximum Out of Pocket expense, that is on top of the deductable. For us it’s $7000 each for a whopping possible total annual health care cost of $19000 plus the $7920 for the insurance premium for a grand total of $26920. And that’s only if we stay within “system”, if we go to a health provider outside the system tag another $6 Grand onto that. Now if I make the average American annual income of around $50K (before taxes) that would be more than half my annual expenses. How is that going to be possible since I also need food, shelter, & clothing, not to mention transportation.

            

        OK, I know that’s a worst case scenario but that’s kind of where I’m at right now. You see my family had a major “health scare” this summer and as of this writing we are about $8K short of our max out of pocket with more bills to come. Now so none of you worry, everything is OK now health wise and no you don’t need to ask details since you know I don’t tell tales out of school. I always hoped that this wouldn’t happen to us but unfortunately, hope just doesn’t cut it.

            

        I’ve mainly been talking about health insurance now let’s talk health care. Unfortunately the week we got the diagnosis from the WHF was the same week that Dr. Davis left and fortunately we were referred to the UC Davis Medical Center. They have been great. Scheduling, communications, explanations, and the medical care have all been wonderful. And to top it all off they have been more than willing to work with us on that big ass out of pocket bill we have with them.

             

        So that brings me to a last little note for today. I was just looking at one of the bills from UCDMC and I was totally shocked to see that a one hour outpatient surgery with pre-op, anesthesia, post-op and all the other bells and whistles was billed at $36000. But that wasn’t the shocker, my insurance company only paying $7600 or 21 cents on the dollar now that was a shock. So which one is the true value of the service that we got, or is it somewhere in between?

            

       No wonder I’m angry. The only ones who can fix the health care system are the politicians and we all know how well that system works. 

To view the column in it's original form go to page 15 of the following link. Winters Express 09/20/12

Cruising at a lazy 55

OK, I warned you that this column named “What’s the Point?” would lean towards the pessimistic. So what better time to show my true nature than a milestone birthday. This week I turn fifty-five. Happy friggin birthday to me. Some people look at the proverbial glass as half full, others as half empty, mine is not only half empty but it also has a crack in it.

So what’s so special about fifty-five? For starters it’s got a nice rhythm and ring to it; fityfive. It rhymes well; I’m still alive at fifty-five. I’m 99.9% sure that I’m more than half way through my life since only a few dozen people have ever lived to be over 110. Also if I had the money I could buy a house in Vacaville at the seniors community of Leisure Town. But for me the real significance is that growing up, fifty-five is the only future age that I actually thought about or aspired too. I was not one to spend much (if any) time thinking about or planning for my future. But I was always told that once you turned fifty-five you could retire. Nobody mentioned, or more likely I wasn’t listening, that you needed to save money and better yet work that one full time job for 25 or 30 years.

So using this birthday as an opportunity to reflect on my life, what do I see? Well first I guess I could have used a better mental theme song in my youth.  Yeah, you know those lyrics that are always floating around in your head. Well mine was “Lazy” by Deep Purple. The one that goes, “Your lazy, just stay in bed. You don’t want no money, you don’t want no bread. - Well my trying ain’t done no good, you don’t make no effort, no not like you should.” That’s me in a nutshell, not making the effort like I should.

My life is full of great starts, but lazy follow through. When I started high school I was smart and liked to read. I didn’t like to study nor do home work so when I discovered pot I artificially enhanced my laziness 10 fold. After high school as a meat salesman there were many days where I would just drive around telling myself that’s not a good place to stop, nobody’s going to want to buy anything. As a manager at the beer distributorship I did my job but didn’t try to be innovative or make more work for myself. I tried to take some college classes while I was working but I still hated studying so I quit again.

In spite of myself I’ve had some successes but then I get lazy. The biggest success that I blew was Steady Eddy’s Café at the Flint, MI farmers market. (I sold it 18 years ago & it’s still going strong) For the restaurant business it was a dream come true. Basically it was a furnished restaurant, with very low rent, only open 3 &1/2 days a week, great foot traffic, meat and produce suppliers downstairs, and cash only. It was successful and making money from day one. But after a few years my scheming lazy side took over and I thought I could make more money while working physically less. So I sold the café after having started Steady Eddy’s Gourmet. That was a wholesale manufacturing business that bottled and sold my vegetarian chili (still available at both Steady Eddy’s locations) to specialty grocery stores. Since you can’t find my Vegetarian Chili or Salsas in the grocery stores any more I guess I didn’t follow through on that either.

After a few more years of either quitting or getting fired from management jobs I moved to California to work for and help my brother expand his business selling and servicing sewing machines and vacuums. After 5 years of fairly easy work, the naively optimistic part of my lazy self said “hey why don’t we open a Coffee Bar here in quiet Winters”. It will be a nice easy, ma & pa business where I can drink coffee and read the newspaper in between the few customers that we need to make a living. As any of you who have been in the coffee house can attest there was nothing quiet or easy about it.

Those four plus years owning the coffee house were the hardest my lazy self has ever worked so when I saw an opportunity to create a full time desk job with the Chamber of Commerce I took it. That didn’t work out as I planned but at least I don’t have to get up at 4:00 in the morning any more.

So as I reflect on my fifty-fifth birthday, my questions would have to be. If I’m so lazy why have I worked so hard, and if I’m working so hard why can’t I reach cruising speed?

To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link. Winters Express 6/7/12

Good People Doing Bad

             I recently heard something about a person that I greatly respect and have genuine affection for. What I heard is driving me crazy and I want to yell in their face, at the top of my lungs, “WTF were you thinking?” If it’s true I just don’t know how to wrap my head around it. It’s so insane and heart breaking that I don’t want to know the details. Just knowing the accusation and having an imagination is bad enough.

            I’ve always thought of myself as having a tendency towards self destructiveness and my history kind of bares that out, but this is way out of my league. Someone who has worked so hard over so many years to build a great life just hit that proverbial flashing red button and blew it up into a million pieces.

            So my question is why do good people sometimes do things that are so bad? I know that in his heart this is a good person. He has been good to me, to his community, to his friends, and to his family. So why now do something so stupid? What happened to the self control, to the conscience? Will a moment of weakness now become a lifetime of regret?

            Human history is full of good and loving people doing bad and hurtful things. Whether it’s recent, like pedophile priests and coaches. Or more historic, like everyday Germans being part of the Nazi extermination machine. Our common history and teachings like the Bible are full of such sad and terrible things.

            Even in my own personal history, I’ve done things that were emotionally hurtful to people I cared for, yet I know that I am a good person. Why did I do it? Youthfulness, lack of self control, not giving value to the other person’s feelings. In hind sight lots of reasons but at the time probably just selfishness. Do I have regrets and feel guilt, you bet. Have I learned from it, become a better person and more empathetic? Yes on that one as well.

            I believe that humans, like Pit Bulls are born good. Some may be born with more aggressive tendencies but it’s the training that makes them turn from normal dogs to fighters. The same goes for us, we are born just wanting to love and be loved. It’s the way we are raised, treated, and taught that makes us who we are as adults.

            Now of course I could be totally wrong and maybe someone could be born just plain evil. This person that I’ve been writing about, maybe the goodness was all a rouse just waiting for an opportunity to do bad. I just don’t think so. I think that we like to label people as evil, Attila the Hun, Adolph Hitler, Osama Bin Laden to name a few. But even these men were innocent children once. I think we call them evil so as a society we don’t have to take any responsibility. We are taught by religious doctrine that it’s good versus evil, God versus the Devil, but the problem is it’s not that simple. We like to think of it as black or white but the truth is much grayer, it’s just too hard to try and understand or rationalize why good people do bad things.

            OK, back to the person in question. I haven’t seen or talked to him since the accusations, gossip, and emails started flying and I’m not sure what I would say. What I want to say is that even if you did do something so stupid, I can’t just throw away my feelings for you. I still like you, respect you, and want to be your friend. It’s just going to be different because it can never again be the way it was.

That’s the problem with this thing we call life, no matter how much we wish, hope, or pray, there are no “do over’s”. We only get one shot so try and do right the first time. But if you’re like so many people before you, who are basically good but do something bad, remember humans have this great capacity to forgive, but we also never forget.

Finally, you don’t know who I’m talking about so DON’T ASK. Even if you think you know, I’ve said all I’m going to say.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link. Winters Express 4/26/12

The Revolution will not be Desensitized.

On Christmas evening I was scanning the news headlines on the internet, I quickly glanced over the bombings in Africa & the Middle East without a second thought but my attention was caught by another headline. “7 dead in Grapevine Murder/Suicide”, I don’t normally click on a story like that because I really don’t want to know all the gory details but this time I did. There wasn’t a lot of detail at that time other than 6 members of a family were shot while opening their presents and then the shooter killed himself. I went to bed with that image in my mind and needless to say couldn’t go right to sleep. I was thinking about what makes it possible for one human being to kill another with such callousness and lack of sensitivity.

This brings me to my topic of Desensitization. As a species, humans have developed a survival instinct that allows us to not think or feel about something that is physically or emotionally painful to ourselves or others. On the most basic level most of us have been desensitized to the fact that we are mortal and at some point will cease to exist so we just go about our lives ignoring that little detail. Some people’s jobs require a level of desensitization such as emergency room staff, fire fighters, and the police. I can only assume that to be a combat solder you have to be desensitized to the feelings of the enemy that you are trying to kill (and is trying to kill you). I guess war and killing is the ultimate level of desensitization.

But what about the more subtle forms of desensitizing that are going on around us all the time, like when you watch one of those CSI cop shows on TV or a horror movie and they show you the dead bodies over and over. Then you see the real news about some little kid that’s been missing for a month and their body was just found. Do you feel horrified or is it just another of life’s episodes where you think “glad it wasn’t anyone I knew” and don’t give it another thought. What about all the violent video games that a lot of people are playing. Don’t you think that seeing as well as causing all that blood and gore for hours on end will make you less sensitive to the real thing? I think the last realistically violent movie I saw was Saving Private Ryan and that was over 10 years ago. I decided then that I didn’t want to be desensitized. If I see a real dead body or act of violence I want to feel sick, disgusted, and horrified. I never want to feel those things for entertainment as so many people do these days.

How about desensitization as a form of brain washing. If all you hear from the media, the talking heads, and partisan politicians is their one side of the story as well as the vilification of the opposition doesn’t that desensitize you to any opposing view? Doesn’t that totally undermine the ability for civil discussion? No wonder government can’t get anything done or help the average Joe.

Speaking of the average Joe, the mass media has been desensitizing us to our own plight for years and it’s finally culminating in the crash of our economy and standard of living. What I mean is that for the last 30 plus years we have been told laboring is bad, financing is good. Working with your hands and making something wasn’t as valuable to our society as manipulating financial instruments. We were desensitized to the needs of the average American, a living wage, health care, and a quality education. We glorified the rich who were making obscene amounts of money with their stock options, bonuses, and executive compensation packages. They were getting wealthy by dismantling and selling off the assets and equity that had been built by manufacturing, by laborers. We all wanted to get rich so we desensitized ourselves to reality and bought into the housing bubble and easy credit that kept it inflated.

When I was gathering my thoughts for this column and thinking about a title, the song and poem by Gil Scott Heron “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” came to mind. (gilscottheron.com/lyrevol.html) It made me think about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and how I do think it’s time for another American Revolution. I’ve often said “we need a revolution, I just don’t want to be here when it happens”. That was before I looked up the definition of a Revolution, (from the Latin word revolutio, “a turn around”) is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that can take place in a relatively short period of time. That’s not so scary, doesn’t have to be violent, and it doesn’t have to be painful. I think most of us agree that we need change so maybe this revolution will not be desensitized.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 12 of the following link. Winters Express 1/12/12